Home > Consumer Reviews > The Sims 2 Pets

Okay, after reading the Amazon reviews (mostly negative) I was pretty much turned off by the game. But, when I went to the store yesterday, planning to buy Sims 2 for DS, they didnt have it, so I crossed my fingers and settled for Sims 2 Pets...great decision!
I do agree that this game is very different than the PC version of Sims 2 Pets, but definitely not in a bad way. You are a veterinarian, and you first name yourself, dress yourself (not as many choices as in the PC version, but it's okay) and make your pet.

You start off in a small country home with a living room / kitchen, bedroom, bathroom, garage area (where you can play and train your pet), examination room, and a foyer. You dont have much time between working the veterinary office and sleeping - a few minutes, Sim time, which is about 5 seconds, because it automatically puts you to bed at closing time, 8:00pm. Your vet opens at 8am, though, and you wake up at 7:55, so it's not a lot of time to take a shower, use the restroom, and cook yourself some fried eggs.
When you examine pets that patients bring in, you first have to raise their "heart" bar, so they are happy, by petting them. Then, you take their temperature, comb their fur for fleas, and possibly give them a shot of medicine, or a snack. Their are not many illnesses" fleas, flu, worms, swallowed foreign object (which you can detect if you have an X-Ray Machine, which you have to buy), and if their owners say they're dirty or they smell bad, or they are ugly in need of a makeover.
If a pet has the flu, you have to buy flu shots from the internet. You give the pet one flu shot per day until it is healthy again. If a pet has fleas, you can buy Flea Shampoo off the internet and bathe it using the shampoo every day until it is healthy. If the pet has worms (which you realize if you give it a snack during examination), you can buy "Worms-B-Gone" from the discount store, and lots of other choices of food to get rid of worms.
When you diagnose the pet, the owner will ask you when he/she should pick it up...there is a choice of One Day, Three Days, or Five days. If the pet is just dirty, hungry, or in need of a makeover, one day is a good choice. Three-Five days is if the pet has the flu, fleas, worms, and Five Days if it has a swallowed foreign object or a broken bone.
Like the Sims 2, you can decorate your house, deleting objects, adding objects, and arranging things. You can buy lots of interactive things, like a wardrobe, vanity, sewing machine...speaking of sewing machine...
A sewing machine is a great long-term savings item. It is $1000 simoleons, and you can actually sew your own clothes for dogs/cats. Online, you can buy patterns for outfits, and it will tell you what materials you need, ie: cotton, buttons, clasps, nylon thread, etc. You buy the items, and click the sewing machine. Pick a pattern, and the shape of the clothing piece will show up. You have to follow the edge of the shape with the stylus, and if you dont make a mistake, you get to use that piece of clothing! But, if you make a mistake, you fail, and you're out $15-$30 for the lost materials.
You can also move into one of three bigger houses, if you have enough money. A the smallest houses is $5,000, the medium sized one is $12,000, and the largest one is $20,000. I have not moved yet, but I am working on it. When you move, all of your furniture goes into storage, so it would be a bit of a hassle once you move in, in my opinion.
Some reviews say there is no socializing envolved in Sims 2 Pets for DS...yes there is! First off, you can socialize with patients, choosing things like "greet", "joke", etc. Also, when you go to the park, you see other people and their dogs/cats there, and you can choose from a broader plethura of choices - greet, joke, gossip, praise pet, insult pet, and one flirty choice, which I choose not to use, LOL.
Well, off to play SIMS 2 PETS for NINTENDO DS. I reccomend this to anyone and everyone out there with a spare thirty dollars! :-)
---Sims Addict---

It's true that this game is fun at first, but after a while it's very boring. I stopped playing it the second day. All you really do in this game is heal pets. Patients are constantly coming to your house and you have little time to get your needs up. I reccommend the regular Sims 2 DS game.

Fun- 4/10
Sound- 6/10
Graphics- 2/10
Overall- 3/10

I gave this game 2 stars for the fun aspect. I had creating my sim, picking a pet, and being able to cook different foods using different combinations of available ingredients. But overall I have to give it one star for several reasons:

First are the bugs that aren't completely worked out, the music will go silent frequently then randomly turn on again, and as someone else mentioned, it sometimes freezes.

The second reason is that the game controls aren't very good. You find yourself having to cancel lots of directions you give your sim because when you tapped on an object or more frequently a customer, just tapping on the DS screen once will bring up the interaction options and then select whatever interaction was underneath the area you tapped. You could unintentionally argue with your clients (why would you do that to someone you just met anyway?) I also have a big problem with the fact that everytime you finish with an animal at one of the stations (i.e. the grooming station, the training area, the bath, or the diagnosis table) the animal is put away and you have to go open the kennel and retrieve the animal again. It's also an incredible hassle to search through your item inventory. The inventory list shows only 4 items per screen (not with pics, with words) and there is no method to the madness. Your food is mixed with your pet supplies and your toys and your furniture and the pet decorations and your recipes and if that's not cluttered enough, your houses land is listen on there, as well as your pet if you put it in the storage bin too. (Poor neglected Spot).

Despite all of this I think the games biggest flaw is the poor playability. I something that makes a game great is that you can play it over and over again and it's always at least somewhat entertaining even if it isn't constantly dynamic. I've played for a total of about 5 hours which is about a calendar month in Sims world. Thus far I've only treated about 18 animals and all of them have either had worms, fleas, or the flu. Each animal has to be treated at least three times (once per Sim day for three days) and for some reason this is the case even if you buy the more expensive Super flea shampoo or more expensive worm medicine. It got very repetitive, very quickly and even though I was finally able to save enough scratch to increase the volume of my business, I found myself asking.. "Why?" The customers came in droves as with them the endless stream of familiar and monotonous tasks.

I was quite disappointed with this game because I've always been so satisfied with the all of the Sims line of games so far. If you really feel you MUST play this game, I highly recommend renting a copy first.

Let me start off by saying that if you think this is a typical Sims game, you're going to be very disappointed. Actually, it's not at all like a Sims game. I have the Sims 2 game for the DS and that game and this particular game couldn't be more different.

If you don't care about whether or not this game is like a regular Sims game, you will care about the lack of a point to this game. You play as a veterinarian that must take care of pets that come to your clinic to be cured. You must diagnose the pet by using different items (such as an x-ray machine, a flea brush, etc.). Once you've diagnosed it, you can decide whether to treat it yourself or send it away to someone else. While doing this, you have to take care of your own needs (eating, sleeping, showering, etc.). You must buy things to cure the pets and continue to administer these treatments until the pet is fully healed. The clinic closes at the end of a "Sims day" and the same thing starts all over again the next day.

So what's to hate about this game? First of all, the owners of the pets that come into the clinic are celebrities (although they look absolutely nothing like them) which I think is absolutely ridiculous. When you talk to these people, the text in the "talk bubbles" is not capitalized, doesn't use any punctuation marks, and sometimes doesn't make sense. There are also other areas in the game that have poorly written text. Some may think that these complaints are petty but it just shows how much of a poor quality game this is.

The biggest problem of this game is there is no real point to it. You're doing the same thing over and over again. And there's nothing to work up to. When you heal pets, your reputation goes up. But what happens when your reputation goes up? Nothing. And there's no mini-games to break up the regular game. Eventually it gets to be boring and repetitive.

Would I recommend this game? Unless you pay $10 or less for it, I'd stay away. I don't know why the creators of the Sims would allow this game to be released. It clearly has nothing to do with any other Sims game and has absolutely no point to it.

This is a great game for all ages. Even 30year olds. It's fun and shines light on the aspects of life. You have something that tells you what your body needs. (Like Food, and rest.) This game is so good that I would recommend it to my worst enemy. The only thing is you have to read the talk bubbles. The Sims speak in their Sim blab. So, no you're not hitting the wrong languagh button. They makers of Sims games have outdone themselves again.